


The Way Home

by coffeeandoranges



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 14:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2510783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeandoranges/pseuds/coffeeandoranges
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She wakes up early, because the dawn smells like snow."</p>
<p>Multifandom short fics or drabbles written for Tumblr friends. Fandoms, characters, and ships will be added as they are uploaded.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way Home

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: tarantism + Sansa/Margaery. For [hellkittenslove](http://www.hellkittenslove.tumblr.com).

 

 

 

When they find her, they find her brown-haired and sensible, the Bastard Girl of the Eyrie, her hands unsteady and her chest as empty as a vacancy at an inn. 

 

“My wife will escort you north,” says a boy who does not look old enough to have a wife, who calls himself Aegon Targaryen. He chuckles. “She seems quite fond of you. Says you were friends in King’s Landing.”

“Friends?”

But Sansa’s question is answered in the next moment. Two footmen are helping a woman off a horse. Her hair is in a golden net. It is Margaery Tyrell.

Sansa cannot take her eyes off her as she strides forward and kisses Sansa’s hand. It is her, but she has changed. There is a child in her arms. Margaery is a mother now, Sansa will learn on the voyage north, and this is the fruit of her new marriage, though the girl looks more Tyrell than Targaryen, with her clear dark eyes.

 

\--

 

“Her name is Octavia,” Margaery tells her when Sansa asks if she can hold her. Long ago Sansa had dreamed of sons, but she can’t remember the last time she’s thought of it.

“And of course you may hold her,” Margaery says. Motherhood suits her; she looks round and alive in a way Sansa cannot (perhaps, will not) replicate.

The girl is a pleasant weight in her lap as Sansa combs her brown curls with her fingers. Her skin is fragile as glass. Sansa kisses the top of her head.

The rest of the way north Sansa sews garments for the child.

The Tyrells lack for nothing, but all around them are barren fields, and not even the Targaryen bride and her infant daughter are safe from the winter. It’s another excuse to visit Margaery in her litter with her daughter.

One night as Sansa fits Octavia with a woolen gown, she asks Margaery if they plan to head south again after ensuring Sansa’s seat at Winterfell.

Octavia fusses, and Margaery nurses her as they talk, her breasts and neck golden in the candlelight. She looks up as Sansa asks the question; the look on her face pierces Sansa to the core.

“My dear girl,” she says. “I’ll go wherever you want me to go."

 

 

\--

\--

 

 

They reach Winterfell a few days later. Sansa wakes up early because the dawn smells like snow. Without waiting for the others, she wraps her shawl and her dress around her and tightens the laces on her boots and walks north, sinking knee-deep in snow, feeling more awake with each step, until the shape of it is clear on the horizon.

Winterfell, in ruins.

She knew this, of course, but knowing and seeing are not the same.

It’s not the ruined towers that pain her, but the new things that came about while she wasn’t here to notice them. As she comes closer she notices them: fallen trees in overgrown paths, cracked stones scarred black, as from a fire, but from an old fire or a more recent one, Sansa cannot say.

 

\--

 

Even the castle does not match her image of it from her childhood. Or her memories are long-past and distorted now, and she is left with just a vague impression of the godswood, as she tried to remember it during those long nights in King’s Landing, its dark, cold heart dappled with sunlight, and the wind blowing through it cleanly from across the plains, not stopped by anything but the Wall and the mountains behind it.

She senses Margaery approaching behind her.

“They took out all the windows,” Sansa says without turning around. “We used to have blown-glass windows in different colors.”

In front of her she can see their breath in the air, just visible against the emerald line of trees. Margaery reaches for her hand. Or it is Sansa who touches her without thinking, and Margaery instantly accepts her hand and holds it.  Their movements occur almost in tandem, too close for her to be sure.

Almost as close, is this: Margaery takes Sansa’s face in her hands, and Sansa hovers there for a moment, feeling the heat of Margaery’s lips and the softness of her cheeks but not quite touching her.

And she pulls Sansa into her arms, murmuring something indistinct into Sansa’s ears, something halfway between  _I’m sorry_  and  _please_.

Sansa closes her eyes and feels light on her face, falling through the canopy of the godswood. She laces her fingers through Margaery’s. Then, unbidden, they start to sway together, a dance in the morning light.

_I wanted to dance_ , Sansa starts to tell her, but Margaery already understands. She tucks her head under Sansa’s chin, humming softly.

Her hair smells like Sansa imagines Highgarden does, light and floral as a spring day. Her head is small—Margaery loomed so large in Sansa’s imagination, the Rose of Highgarden, that it comes as a surprise how squarely she fits in Sansa’s arms, safe there, her skull notched beneath Sansa’s chin, as fragile as her child’s.

“You daughter is beautiful,” Sansa tells her, when she finds her voice again.

“Thank you,” Margaery says. Her voice is a warm purr against Sansa’s chest, and it warms her too. “I think so too.”

 

 

\--

\--


End file.
